


Luck and Love and Time

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Multi, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Spoilers for The Hanging Tree, functional immortality, mentioned Peter Grant/Thomas Nightingale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Mama Grant might not be an orisa or a witch-finder, but she can see what’s right in front of her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mardia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/gifts).



> Hi mardia! This is a treat because I liked your prompt.

Beverley stepped into the lift at the Peckwater Estate. It smelled better than it had when she’d first come to visit Peter’s parents, not least because they’d changed the carpeting since, but the close air was still enough to make her feel nauseous right now. It was a relief when she stepped out onto the open-air landing. When she knocked on the door of the flat, Mama Grant opened it right away.

“Beverley!” she said, like she hadn't known Beverley was coming. “Come in, sit down, your back will be hurting if you stand up too long. It is so kind of you to come and visit an old woman.”

“It’s always good to visit you, Mama Grant,” said Beverley, and bent a bit to hug her. “My back’s alright for now; I’m not even at twenty weeks, you know.”

“It goes faster than you think, from here,” said her mother-in-law. “Sit, sit; I’ll make the tea.”

That was a special concession to Beverley’s upcoming status as mother of her first grandchild, just like Beverley coming here was a concession to Mama Grant’s dislike of driving or taking the Tube and bus all the way out to Beverley and Peter's house. While it brewed, she asked what Beverley had been up to. Beverley told her the latest news about her family, the latest funny accident one of Peter’s apprentices had had, how she’d found some tourists littering and explained to them that they weren’t going to do that again.

Mama Grant laughed at that. “They will be the tidiest tourists in the country while they are here, I think.” She brought the teapot to the small dining table. Beverley was noticing, now, the wrinkles on her hands, the seemingly sudden dark spots. No wonder she was so pleased to finally have a grandchild on the way.

Isis had been the first one to tell Beverley how it was going to be, when she was still half a kid, carting all her hair products upstream to the wilds of Staines. Even her mother hadn’t been old enough then for it to have happened to her, not quite. All her nursing school cronies had still been alive. Beverley had, as Ty had once said, still thought she was human. More or less.

“You blink and they’re gone,” Isis had said. “I still get up some mornings and think I’d like to tell my friend Anne something. She’s been dead for two hundred years. You’ve got years and years until it happens, but it will one day. Your family, you’re still all so young – no, it’s not an insult. You’ve got to think about that.”

And now Peter’s mother had grey in her hair she didn't bother to hide, and his dad was gone, and one day Peter would be too, and Beverley was twenty weeks pregnant and starting to see what Isis had meant. But here she was anyway, because choosing not to have things didn’t stop them ending. It just stopped you having them.

The telly roared suddenly in the background; it was a replay of a rugby game at Twickenham in the weekend. Beverley recognised it because she’d gone, and said as much.

“Did you go on your own?” Mama Grant asked. “I never like going to the live games – all the crowds, all the pushing. Much better on a good television. And you can change the channel if you get bored.”

“I like it,” Beverley said; she never got pushed, nobody was that stupid. And the roar of the crowd, that was something else, something magical. Twickenham was Crane’s patch more than hers but Crane was barely ever home, so somebody had to look after it. “I took Thomas along – the Nightingale, I mean, Inspector Nightingale. At least he appreciates it. Might have taken him even if Peter had been here.” Peter was in Germany right now, a work thing, and not back until Friday. She’d had texts but he hadn’t even called since Sunday night. That was just Peter; she knew he hadn’t called Nightingale either, even for work stuff. He’d tell her about it when he got back.  

“Hmmm,” said her mother-in-law. “Does Peter know you’re taking his man out when he’s away?”

Beverley spluttered into her tea and had to grab for a tissue. She kept them in her handbag now, after the unfortunate early period of morning sickness, which had stubbornly refused to confine itself to the morning.  

Mama Grant kissed her teeth. “You thought I didn’t know about that.”

“Know what?” Beverley said reflexively, only that was stupid; they both knew what she meant, and she wasn’t going to lie about this to Mama Grant, not for nothing but Peter’s pride. She looked at Mama Grant for a minute, and shrugged, suddenly a little nervous. She wasn’t sure how this was going to go. “I mean, no, I didn’t. I didn’t know you knew.”

“I may not be an _orisa_ or a witch-finder,” said Mama Grant with dignity, “but that does not mean I cannot see what is in front of my face. And Peter invited him for Christmas.”

“That didn’t mean – that was before,” said Beverley. “And yeah, of course Peter knew I took him to the rugby, why would that be a secret? It’s not like that with _me_ and him. Just – just with Peter.” Skinny white guys were totally not her thing, even ones who _weren’t_ the Nightingale, but apparently it worked for Peter.

“I’m not saying that was the only thing I noticed,” said Mama Grant. “Half the time he’s at your house for dinner when I call, and the way Peter looks at him when he’s happy – Peter is my son; I know what it means, when he looks at somebody like that. I know how it looks when he looks at you. As I said. It was in front of my face, and I am not blind. But Peter has always thought he was better at keeping secrets than he is.”

“Then how did you know _I_ knew about it?” Beverley had to ask. “That it wasn’t Peter just - having it off behind my back, while I’m preggers. It could be. It’s not, he wouldn’t, but it could have been.”

“I didn’t know,” said Mama Grant. “Well, I thought you must. You would never stand for Peter running around behind your back, now or any other time, you’re not that sort of girl. And to run around on an _orisa,_ a man would have to be very stupid indeed, and I didn’t raise a stupid son.”

“No, you didn’t,” Beverley agreed; Peter could be a bit reckless, with himself anyway, but it was never out of stupidity. Mostly it was out of cleverness, which was sometimes worse. “And no, I wouldn't. He wouldn’t know what had happened to him.” She smiled, and sipped her tea.

Mama Grant snorted. “Even so. Sex makes men stupid,” she went on with a steely gleam in her eye, “and he is still not so old that I can’t beat him, and if it came to that it would be better to sort it out now. You don’t have time for that sort of nonsense, not when you will be a mother, and him a father. And sometimes being about to be a father, that makes men even _more_ stupid.”

“Peter would have to be a different sort of person,” Beverley said firmly. “To do that to me, now or ever. Not the person he is, not the person I married.”

There was nothing sordid or shameful or even very secret about the arrangement they had, about Peter and Thomas and Peter and her, but she knew Peter hadn’t quite worked out the words to bring it up to his mother, and then Beverley had got pregnant practically their first real try and it had stopped being the biggest thing she needed to be told. Beverley had thought that was going to come back to bite Peter later, but it hadn’t been her decision to make. _Her_ mother didn’t think anything in particular of it, except having started referring to “Beverley’s wizards”, which wasn’t how Beverley would have said it, but mothers were mothers; they said what they wanted to. Her mother more than most.

“You don’t know what people are, sometimes,” said Mama Grant. “You find these things out.” She paused, looked down at her tea. “Did Peter ever talk to you about that witch he brought to Richard’s show? A long time ago. Before him and you.”

“Simone Fitzwilliam,” Beverley said. “Yeah, he told me. He wasn’t – he didn’t know.” She didn’t know how much Mama Grant knew about Simone Fitzwilliam, what she’d really been; how much grief Peter had carried around, that on top of Lesley and everything, on top of the everyday horrors of his job. When he’d told her she’d been angry, in a weird way, that he hadn’t told her before then, that he’d been carrying it on his own – it wasn’t like he and Nightingale _talked_ properly _,_ and definitely they hadn’t back then, and from what Peter had said, Nightingale and Walid had been the only people who knew the whole story. But like Mama Grant said, it was before her and Peter; before she’d had a right to be told. What mattered was that he’d wanted to tell her eventually.

“That was the only time, with Richard, that I thought he might,” said Mama Grant. “The first time she was there, long ago, when I didn’t know she was an evil witch. I knew already, that I was going to be sharing him with his music, that I didn’t mind, and the drugs, for such a long time. That I minded, but I couldn’t do anything about it, then. But her – maybe it was because she was a witch, maybe it wasn’t his fault. But until it happened, or until it _almost_ happened, I didn’t know. I didn’t know he was capable of it. I had to find out. And then it never happened again, but you remember these things.” She gave Beverley a long, level look. “So maybe you didn’t know, and maybe you needed to find out.”

“This isn’t the same as that,” said Beverley, trying not to be upset at the comparison; this was Peter’s mother, trying to do her best for Peter and for Beverley. She wasn’t accusing him of anything. “And I know, of course I know, I think I knew before Peter did. Maybe before both of them did. I let them figure it out, though. It wasn’t my job to do it for them.”

They’d had to talk about it eventually, when it was obvious it was going to _be_ something, that Thomas and Peter were more to each other than friends and colleagues, but that was different; that was making an arrangement, the same sort of way she and the Nightingale had all those years ago when he’d asked her to go to Herefordshire. Thomas hadn’t liked that comparison, but it was the truest one Beverley knew.

“Of course,” said Mama Grant. “Men, they aren’t very bright about these things.” She sipped her tea.

“You…” Beverley wasn’t quite sure how to say this. “This is okay?” She’d expected more yelling, the way Peter had talked about it. Maybe it was being saved up for Peter. It would probably be fair to find out; that way she could give him a heads-up.

“Young people,” said Mama Grant. “You think you invented everything. And yes, you are still young, and I don’t just mean that pretty face of yours. If it was my husband, I would not think it was okay. But I never would have said yes in the first place, so you are not me, besides being what you are, and then who am I to judge?”

Beverley looked at her incredulously, because of course she was judging, and Mama Grant laughed at her expression. “All right, I am judging, but like I said. You are young, you think these things are new. They are not.” Then she frowned. “But what does _your_ mother think?”

“My mother thinks I’m old enough to look after myself,” said Beverley. “Some of my sisters, though...” She thought Ty might still not know, unless Fleet had been gossiping again. She didn’t mean to _let_ Ty know, as long as it could be avoided. Not at all worth the lecture. Ty had barely given up on trying to get Beverley to dump Peter, for her own good and his, of course, without adding that into the mix.

“At least you know they worry about you.” Mama Grant patted Beverley’s hand. “You know what you have.”

Beverley had her river, and her sisters and mother and all their children; she had Peter and his boundless questions and boundless love for her; she had all her cousins upstream, all her friends who walked in the world of magic. She had Mama Grant and the rest of Peter’s family, who liked her even if they didn’t all know quite what she was.

 She even had all the wizards in the Folly now, the ones Peter and Thomas had trained, who politely called her Ms Thames and listened if she had something to tell them, who respected her, which was something new in the world. She _had_ the new world she’d helped Peter build. And now she was going to have a child, and if she was lucky, it wouldn’t start asking as many questions as its father until it was four or five. But probably it would be sooner, and she wouldn’t mind.

And she supposed she did have Thomas as well, because he was Peter’s and Peter was hers. It was a lot of things to have, a lot of luck and a lot of love, but then, she _was_ a goddess. She could handle it.

“I do,” she said. “Really, Mama Grant. You don’t need to worry either.”

“Good,” said her mother-in-law, with satisfaction. “I won’t. And you shouldn’t either. Worrying is bad for the baby. Hard work isn’t, don’t let anybody tell you nonsense about that, but worrying is. And I suppose at least you’ll have an extra pair of hands, when the little one finally decides to show himself.”

“We don’t know if it’s a he yet,” said Beverley, who thought also that they might not really know for years anyway, but maybe Mama Grant might not quite understand that. And that she found it really hard to imagine the Nightingale helping with a baby, even Peter’s and hers, but she could imagine Thomas doing it – he was really good at learning new things if you showed them to him once, and he was careful, and she thought he’d want to – and that summed up a lot of things, didn't it.

“I thought you might be able to tell, with your magic.”

Beverley laughed. “No, it doesn’t work like that. I have to get an ultrasound like everybody else.” This child wasn’t a River, after all; there was nothing to sense, not yet. Peter had spent one whole evening trying to figure out how you could do an ultrasound with wizards’ magic, mostly just talking to himself while Beverley made “mmm-hmm” noises and texted the most entertaining trains of thought to Sahra – there was no way she was letting anybody do a wizard’s spell on her for that, even Peter – but Peter hadn’t been able to figure it out, either.

“Anyway,” he’d concluded. “There’s no way you’d let me try. I'd have to start on mice or something, and do you know how hard it is to get animal research permits?”

“See,” Beverley had said. “The fact that you were able to remember that eventually, that’s why I married you.”

“Oh, I remembered it right at the start,” Peter had said, grinning up at her; he was lying back on the couch. “I just wanted to figure out if I _could_ do it.”

“Oh, well,” said Mama Grant. “Maybe it will be a girl. I always thought I’d like a girl, you know, but it was just Peter. There wasn’t room for more than him.”

She gestured at the flat, but Beverley thought she meant more than that. She didn’t ask. If Mama Grant had wanted to say that, she would have.

“So you two will just have to make up for it,” she went on. “Since you have the extra help.”

“Let me get this one out first!” Beverley exclaimed, with a bit of alarm. Of course Mama Grant had been asking when they were going to get started for years now, not in part because Peter had gotten ahead of himself that one time, but she’d thought that actually _being_ pregnant might buy a reprieve. “We’ve got time.”

“A lot more for you than me,” said Mama Grant.

Beverley looked at her, tried to sound reassuring. “You’ve got time yet too, I think.” Less than it had seemed like when Beverley was twenty, or twenty-five. But time. You got what you got of it. “And you know we want more than one.”

Mama Grant nodded. “Well. Maybe see how this one turns out first, I suppose.”

“This one,” Beverley said, putting a hand on her stomach where it was just starting to round, “is going to be amazing. I just know it.”

“He’s got you for a mother,” said Mama Grant. “Of course he is.”


End file.
